10,000 Form Human Chain in Paris Demanding World Leaders Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground

Thousands of Parisians and activists from around the world joined hands to form a human chain along Boulevard Voltaire in Paris this afternoon. According to Agence France Presse, nearly 10,000 people took part in the demonstration.

“We joined hands today against climate change and violence,” said Hoda Baraka, Global Communications Manager for 350.org. “People here in Paris, and hundreds of thousands who are taking part in climate marches worldwide, have a clear message for world leaders: keep fossil fuels in the ground and finance a just transition to 100 percent renewable energy.”

The chain stretched all the way from the Oberkampf metro stop, just down the boulevard from Place de Republique, passed the Bataclan theater, where the tragic attacks of Nov. 13 took place, and down to Place de la Nation. Parents, children, activists and delegates to the COP21 climate talks from around the world joined hands together to call for peace and climate justice.

As the gathering took place in Paris, hundreds of thousands of people took part in Global Climate Marches around the world. Some of the largest marches drew thousands to tens of thousands of people in Quezon City, Sydney, Melbourne, Cairo, London, Tokyo, Barcelona, Berlin, Johannesburg and more. Demonstrators called on politicians to end the use of fossil fuels and finance a just transition to 100 percent renewable energy.

After the tragic attacks of Nov. 13, the French Authorities banned all public rallies and demonstrations, including the planned Paris Climate March. Members of the Climate Coalition 21, the coalition organizing the march, pulled together the human chain as a last minute alternative.

“Today’s human chain sets the stage for the creative and powerful ways in which civil society will continue to mobilize throughout the coming weeks as the climate talks unfold in Paris," said Nicolas Haeringer 350.org campaigner in France. "The movements call for climate justice is more urgent than ever as we see the climate crisis unfold worldwide,” he added.

Organizers intentionally kept the number of participants in the demonstration low and stuck to the sidewalks in order to avoid a direct confrontation with the police. Over the last few days, a number of activists have been placed under house arrest, raising concerns that the French authorities are unnecessarily repressing civil liberties during the State of Emergency. Activists see Sunday’s demonstration as an encouraging sign that more demonstrations may be allowed during the coming two weeks of the climate summit.

The world's unregarded forests are at risk. Intact forest is now being destroyed at an annual rate that threatens to cancel out any attempts to contain global warming by controlling greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study.

As the world's population grows and the planet warms, demand for water will rise but the quality and reliability of the supply is expected to deteriorate, the United Nations said Monday in this year's World Water Development Report.

"We need new solutions in managing water resources so as to meet emerging challenges to water security caused by population growth and climate change," said Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in a statement. "If we do nothing, some five billion people will be living in areas with poor access to water by 2050."

Despite a court-ordered injunction barring anyone from coming within 5 meters (approximately 16.4 feet) of two of its BC construction sites, opponents of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion sent a clear message Saturday that they would not back down.

Twenty-eight demonstrators were arrested March 17 after blocking the front gate to Kinder Morgan's tank farm in Burnaby, BC for four hours, according to a press release put out by Protect the Inlet, the group leading the protest.

Climate change is a big, ugly, unwieldy problem, and it's getting worse by the day. Emissions are rising. Ice is melting, and virtually no one is taking the carbon crisis as seriously as the issue demands. Countries need to radically overhaul their energy systems in just a few short decades, replacing coal, oil and gas with clean energy. Even if countries overcome the political obstacles necessary to meet that aim, they can expect heat waves, drought and storms unseen in the history of human civilization and enough flooding to submerge Miami Beach.

Trump has loudly declared his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement, but, behind the tweets and the headlines, U.S. officials and scientists have carried on working with international partners to fight climate change, Reuters reported Wednesday.

A Hollywood scriptwriter couldn't make this up. One day after new data revealed widespread toxic water contamination near coal ash disposal sites, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt announced a proposal to repeal the very 2015 EPA safeguards that had required this data to be tracked and released in the first place. Clean water is a basic human right that should never be treated as collateral damage on a corporate balance sheet, but that is exactly what is happening.